Trans NYT Executive Abused Children, Wife Claims

Jonathan McKinsey, a 40-year-old transgender technology executive at The New York Times, was shot to death in a Dublin, California, parking lot. Police later arrested his wife’s parents, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77. They were booked without bail on charges that include murder, felony conspiracy, child endangerment, and firing a gun in a dangerous manner.

Witnesses described two masked shooters walking up to McKinsey at Dublin Sports Grounds, opening fire, and leaving. He was hit multiple times and died at the scene. Captain Michael Campos said investigators are “looking for motives from all angles as well as looking at the histories and relationships of everyone involved.”

That history is a stack of court filings. McKinsey and his wife, Candice Jang, were in a bitter custody fight over three young children. They had traded restraining-order requests, abuse accusations, and criminal allegations for years. A custody hearing had been set for the Friday after the shooting.

Jang told a court the abuse “over the past 17 years has caused permanent damage to my mental health and physical health.” She asked for an order “to protect myself and my three children, as well as my mother from future abuse.” A judge granted a domestic violence prevention order in 2025.

In sworn papers she described a household that organized itself around his temper. “During our marriage, the children and I learned to avoid provoking Jonathan lest he became angry. In my experience, appearing agreeable or happy around him was sometimes a means of avoiding his anger.”

The filings include specific claims about the children. Jang alleged he struck their 6-year-old son several times, shoved him so his head hit a hardwood floor, and hit him in the face over a Lego dispute hard enough to leave a handprint bruise. She also alleged that in December 2022 he pulled their young daughter so her head struck the corner of a baby gate.

She said he called the boy names including “a**hole” and “jerk,” grabbed her wrist in 2018 hard enough to bruise it, and threatened to kill her and her parents. She said he later gave the children a book about a girl mourning her mother’s death. “Given his prior threats against my life, I found the choice deeply disturbing and frightening.”

McKinsey denied the picture she drew. He claimed Jang had abused him for more than 15 years, including striking him with a frying pan in 2013, and that her father punched him in the chest while he was recovering from gender-transition surgery. He also alleged Chen used anti-LGBTQ slurs toward him and a child.

He faced a misdemeanor child-abuse charge after deputies found a 2-year-old left unattended. He was trying to enter a mental-health diversion program that could have ended in dismissal. Jang’s lawyer said the children were “simply not safe when left unsupervised and in his care.”

McKinsey joined the Times in 2023 and became head of engineering for games player experience. None of that job history answers the custody file. Police have not called the shooting a finished story. They have two elderly in-laws in jail, a dead Times executive, and a family record full of competing accusations.

Every abuse claim in the civil papers remains an allegation. The criminal case against Zhang and Chen will have to prove who fired and why. The custody fight that was supposed to return to court on Friday is now sitting next to a homicide file.